Animate CC 2017 - black border around stage

[Falrinth]

How to disable it? I hate it.

Talking about this one:

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

There isn't a way to hide it. The line is outside of the stage area, so your stage content isn't being covered up.

[Falrinth]

Then it should be removed in a patch. What a horrible idea to add it for no reason in new build. There was and is already different background shade of active stage area and the area around it. Who needs a border that interferes with the look of the creation? If we need it to see the border if some elements cover the edges, we can make a freaking border ourselves as a guide layer. The hardcored border line is just awefull idea. I dont know how could someone come up with it.

Any idea if I can "hack" some file to get rid of it?

[Colin Holgate]

I don't know the thinking that went into adding that, but it could be it was related to adding the ability to rotate the stage.

Out of curiosity, what problem does the line cause?

[Falrinth]

Im making a lot of ads (hence light workplace template - ads ususally are displayed on light bgs), and variations for clients (including different borders, that have an impact on the look of the whole ad). With that hardcored border on top of the ad it makes it harder to judge if it looks ok or not when i play with it.

I understund that the camera feature is indeed pretty cool for animated movies, making it little bit easier, to move the camera insetad of making animations inside a clip you zoom in/out or rotate. I doubt tho that I will find uses for it in ads with lot of carefully cropped and weight-optimised bitmaps that dont tolerate movement well (blurring / jumping from pixel to pixel in non-basic movement / easing etc).

Anyway, the possibility to toggle this border on/off is neccessary.

I understund i can go around and test the feel of ad with borders i cant see due to that black border on top of it, publishing it over and over again. But when i multiply it by the amount of files i go trough with each campaign with "yestarday" deadlines, the time wasted gets much longer than you think. And again: Whats easier? Time (money) consuming workarounds or making the toggle option in an expensive tool we pay for? Im suprised how open-source software like Blender gets more and more intuitive, elastic and comfortable, while the paid software suprises with such uncomfortable "new features" that dont really bring big improvement but brings such irritating things like this untogglable black border, showing absolute lack of respect for the users and the way they use the software. Animated vector short-films/html5 mini-games arent the only thing Animate is used for...

I would welcome any improvements for the ads-making field. Like ready templates for more and more big ads networks, with their updated codes so we dont have to do that to each format after we are done with reformatting.

Sometimes i feel Adobe dont know we are making animated ads in Animate and how the process looks like (animating master format, reformatting to dozens of other formats, then adding codes to html files according to networks' specifications - the last one is very time consuming and very repetetive - couls use automation)... Am I in tiny minority, or what?

To add insult to injury we can manipulate the default.html file to change the default publishing template for html file so 1 network specification can be automated with that, but when you try to do more templates they cant be done the same way. They are saved as non-html files that are much harder to manipulate for non-programmer.

With the new subscription based business model they do have more than enough money to create a base and keep the networks' specifications up to date in the software for both US and EU networks that would make ads-making so much easier and faster. But insetad they choose to ignore ads-making field completly, and do the silly camera feature...

[ClayUUID]

Falrinth wrote:

Sometimes i feel Adobe dont know we are making animated ads in Animate and how the process looks like

I'm sure they're perfectly aware of it. They're also aware that animated ads are the single most loathed artifact of the modern internet, so easing their creation isn't exactly high on the priority list.

[Falrinth]

ClayUUID,

all marketing is loathed more or less (the networks specifications are doing fine job limiting the frustration factor). But if you ended up earning money in this profession you expect the paid tools to be maintained well if you pay for it monthly, not to try and reinvent it's purpose with each iteration.

Go ahead and try to fit for example extensive financial institutions' legal texts in small, static formats when their lawyers says it must be on the ad, even tho it fits A4 paper page. Or ads where client want a lot of text on small format. Good luck. We dont live in perfect world, where clients share designers' aproach to ads. Nor can we earn money not following what client wants.

Adobe is making tools. They should meet the needs, not try to reshape them. Am I not right? We - the users and customers, have specific needs for the tool, we are not missionaries of adobe's view of what should be done in the marketing field of the internet, we are proffesionals earning money to pay the bills. Demand shows us what should be done. And we invest years specialising in our proffesions that supplies for that demand. There is big demand for animated / interactive ads (and will be for years, cause movement catches attention, and you wont fit videos everywhere), and your comment about "loathed artifact obviously not on priority list" of the tool's manufacturer is disrespectful towards those who choose such specialisation and are paying as much for the tool as any other user. Especially in time where the current iteration of the tool makes our lifes harder for no reason.

P.S.

Dont you see the irony of paying monthly to get worse and worse tool for our needs? And how disrespectfull your comment is in such situation?

[selfdefiant]

I too find it very annoying that you can't hide the border. How hard could it possible be to make it an option? Why did they add it in the first place? I can't see how it's so great or helpful. You can make your own but you can't remove the one that's there.

[Colin Holgate]

It's a year later now, and they did add a preference to hide the border a while ago. Not exactly sure which version it was, one or two versions ago.

[selfdefiant]

Thanks, this is what I was looking for. From reading the comments here, I didn't know it existed.

[Colin Holgate]

It wasn't a featured item on the front of adobe.com!

I'm part of the prerelease program, so I do read all of the release notes, but not everything gets into the public release notes. So, you have to be slightly psychic.

[JordanJS_MMB]

Thank you! I take screenshots of my banners in the program, so removing the border is a must. You totally saved my life!

[rosebudd]

I create my border and forget about it. If it is the correct size and at the correct x and y, what is there to test? Surely you preview your file at least once. When I create another size, i modify my border dimensions. Big Woop.

Regarding having to modify an HTML file for it to function as an ad, that is part of the post SWF job description.  You are being paid, I assume.

IMHO and from some of your  past comments you seem to like to complain.

[Colin Holgate]

rosebudd, I like that people can vent a little bit here! It can help you think through what it is that is the main thing that bothers you, or maybe them.

But, I too am mildly puzzled. I think that Falrinth is saying that the border interferes with his usual approach of visualizing how the final banner will be, but if anything it ought to help show exactly which area users will see. The stroke is outside the content area, what is inside that is exactly what people will see.

Falrinth, people on the prerelease have already commented on the border always being there, and there may be an option in the future, I'm not sure. There would be no harm in you suggesting the option yourself, along with more arguments about why it would be a good feature:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Might be a good idea to keep your example use cases as short as you can. The report will get through to the engineers/product team, and the quicker they get the point, the better.

[robdillon]

Not that I know of. That outline just shows the active space for the stage. It is not exported into the finished file. If you choose the "Dark" interface option in the Preferences, it is less obvious.

[_keyframer]

Yes - Preferences > Hide Stage Border. it was added because many of us work with objects that are much larger than the stage size. We were always having to convert our layers to outlines to help us see the stage boundary when placing objects relative to the view-able area. You can blame us on the prerelease team but at least there's an option to hide it. I personally use it all the time and love it.